Colleagues Party Quotes

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

Introverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

And we stood like that. The joining of hands is highly underrated in the acts of intimacy. You kiss acquaintances or colleagues, casually to say hello or good-bye. You might even kiss a close friend chastely on the lips. You might quickly hug anyone you knew. You might even meet someone at a party, take him home and sleep with him, never to see him or hear from him again. But to join hands and stand holding each other that way, with the electricity of possibilities flowing between you? The tenderness of it, the promise of it, is only something you share with a few people in your life.

All modern U.S. presidents are perforce politicians, prisoners of their past pronouncements, their party, their constituency, and their colleagues.

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions. A few things introverts are not: The word introvert is not a synonym for hermit or misanthrope.

In our country, we don’t swear an oath to an individual, or a political party. We take our oath to defend the United States Constitution. And that oath must mean something. Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.

The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away from it. Not when you’re in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope. At the time, I resented the fact that it was always seen as my fault, that I was the one letting the side down. But as the speed with which he managed to impregnate Anna demonstrates, there was never any problem with Tom’s virility. I was wrong to suggest that we should share the blame; it was all down to me. Lara, my best friend since university, had two children in two years: a boy first and then a girl. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want to hear anything about them. I didn’t want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to me after a while. There was a girl at work who told me—casually, as though she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction—that she’d recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much less traumatic than the surgical one she’d had when she was at university. I couldn’t speak to her after that, I could barely look at her. Things became awkward in the office; people noticed. Tom didn’t feel the way I did. It wasn’t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn’t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did—I’m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. “We’re happy,” he used to say to me. “Why can’t we just go on being happy?” He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.

I believe it is time for my Republican colleagues to put country ahead of party and join us and hold this President accountable. And it is far past time that a special prosecutor be appointed to oversee the FBI’s investigation into Russia.

You might ask yourself why you want to surprise your readers in the first place. A surprise ending is sort of like a surprise party. Probably some people, somewhere, enjoy having friends and trusted colleagues lunge at them in the sudden blinding light of their own living room, but I don't think most of us do.

Our prevailing philosophy is “you do you”—be who you were made to be, make your own decisions, and live your best life. We just want you to actually do you—not Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity—based on the experiences that you’re having every day and the values that you want to infuse into your life. And we want you to do you with your friends and neighbors and fellow parishioners and colleagues. Political pundits have become fond of discussing partisan politics as “tribal.” We don’t want your tribe to be your political party. We want it to be the communities in which you live, worship, and work—diverse in thought as they may be.

Everyone found Grant modest and retiring, an altogether likable fellow. “His only dissipation was in owning a fast horse,” said a regimental colleague. “He always liked to have a fine nag, and he paid high prices to get one.”Grant enjoyed playing chess and checkers, attending parties with Julia, and worshipping with her at the Methodist church.

Magnus, his silver mask pushed back into his hair, intercepted the New York vampires before they could fully depart. Alec heard Magnus pitch his voice low. Alec felt guilty for listening in, but he couldn’t just turn off his Shadowhunter instincts. “How are you, Raphael?” asked Magnus. “Annoyed,” said Raphael. “As usual.” “I’m familiar with the emotion,” said Magnus. “I experience it whenever we speak. What I meant was, I know that you and Ragnor were often in contact.” There was a beat, in which Magnus studied Raphael with an expression of concern, and Raphael regarded Magnus with obvious scorn. “Oh, you’re asking if I am prostrate with grief over the warlock that the Shadowhunters killed?” Alec opened his mouth to point out the evil Shadowhunter Sebastian Morgenstern had killed the warlock Ragnor Fell in the recent war, as he had killed Alec’s own brother. Then he remembered Raphael sitting alone and texting a number saved as RF, and never getting any texts back. Ragnor Fell. Alec felt a sudden and unexpected pang of sympathy for Raphael, recognizing his loneliness. He was at a party surrounded by hundreds of people, and there he sat texting a dead man over and over, knowing he’d never get a message back. There must have been very few people in Raphael’s life he’d ever counted as friends. “I do not like it,” said Raphael, “when Shadowhunters murder my colleagues, but it’s not as if that hasn’t happened before. It happens all the time. It’s their hobby. Thank you for asking. Of course one wishes to break down on a heart-shaped sofa and weep into one’s lace handkerchief, but I am somehow managing to hold it together. After all, I still have a warlock contact.” Magnus inclined his head with a slight smile. “Tessa Gray,” said Raphael. “Very dignified lady. Very well-read. I think you know her?” Magnus made a face at him. “It’s not being a sass-monkey that I object to. That I like. It’s the joyless attitude. One of the chief pleasures of life is mocking others, so occasionally show some glee about doing it. Have some joie de vivre.” “I’m undead,” said Raphael. “What about joie de unvivre?” Raphael eyed him coldly. Magnus gestured his own question aside, his rings and trails of leftover magic leaving a sweep of sparks in the night air, and sighed. “Tessa,” Magnus said with a long exhale. “She is a harbinger of ill news and I will be annoyed with her for dumping this problem in my lap for weeks. At least.” “What problem? Are you in trouble?” asked Raphael. “Nothing I can’t handle,” said Magnus. “Pity,” said Raphael. “I was planning to point and laugh. Well, time to go. I’d say good luck with your dead-body bad-news thing, but . . . I don’t care.” “Take care of yourself, Raphael,” said Magnus. Raphael waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder. “I always do.

I need my colleagues to understand that...their base is not the enemy (11/2020 in New York Times)

It was a colleague, Everard Bone, who with his wife Mildred was to be one of the guests at the dinner party that evening.

Tibet has not yet been infested by the worst disease of modern life, the everlasting rush. No one overworks here. Officials have an easy life. They turn up at the office late in the morning and leave for their homes early in the afternoon. If an official has guests or any other reason for not coming, he just sends a servant to a colleague and asks him to officiate for him. Women know nothing about equal rights and are quite happy as they are. They spend hours making up their faces, restringing their pearl necklaces, choosing new material for dresses, and thinking how to outshine Mrs. So-and-so at the next party. They do not have to bother about housekeeping, which is all done by the servants. But to show that she is mistress the lady of the house always carries a large bunch of keys around with her. In Lhasa every trifling object is locked up and double-locked. Then there is mah-jongg. At one time this game was a universal passion. People were simply fascinated by it and played it day and night, forgetting everything else—official duties, housekeeping, the family. The stakes were often very high and everyone played—even the servants, who sometimes contrived to lose in a few hours what they had taken years to save. Finally the government found it too much of a good thing. They forbade the game, bought up all the mah-jongg sets, and condemned secret offenders to heavy fines and hard labor. And they brought it off! I would never have believed it, but though everyone moaned and hankered to play again, they respected the prohibition. After mah-jongg had been stopped, it became gradually evident how everything else had been neglected during the epidemic. On Saturdays—the day of rest—people now played chess or halma, or occupied themselves harmlessly with word games and puzzles.

Carl had met Renee at a party given by a colleague of his. He had been taken with her face. Hers was a remarkably plain face, and it appeared quite somber most of the time, but during the party he saw her smile twice and frown once; at those moments, her entire countenance assumed the expression as if it had never known another. Carl had been caught by surprise: he could recognize a face that smiled regularly, or a face that frowned regularly, even if it were unlined. He was curious as to how her face had developed such a close familiarity with so many expressions, and yet normally revealed nothing. It took a long time for him to understand Renee, to read her expressions. But it had definitely been worthwhile. Now

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions. A

Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens.

The most direct path to Party was raising pigs. The company had several dozen of these and they occupied an unequaled place in the hearts of the soldiers; officers and men alike would hang around the pigsty, observing, commenting, and willing the animals to grow. If the pigs were doing well, the swine herds were the darlings of the company, and there were many contestants for this profession. Xiao-her became a full-time swineherd. It was hard, filthy work, not to mention the psychological pressure. Every night he and his colleagues took turns to get up in the small hours to give the pigs an extra feed. When a sow produced piglets they kept watch night after night in case she crushed them. Precious soybeans were carefully picked, washed, ground, strained, made into 'soybean milk," and lovingly fed to the mother to stimulate her milk. Life in the air force was very unlike what Xiao-her had imagined. Producing food took up more than a third of the entire time he was in the military. At the end of a year's arduous pig raising, Xiao-her was accepted into the Party. Like many others, he put his feet up and began to take it easy. After membership in the Party, everyone's ambition was to become an officer; whatever advantage the former brought, the latter doubled it. Getting to be an officer depended on being picked by one's superiors, so the key was never to displease them. One day Xiao-her was summoned to see one of the college's political commissars. Xiao-her was on tenterhooks, not knowing whether he was in for some unexpected good fortune or total disaster. The commissar, a plump man in his fifties with puffy eyes and a loud, commanding voice, looked exceedingly benign as he lit up a cigarette and asked Xiao-her about his family background, age, and state of health. He also asked whether he had a fiance to which Xiao-her replied that he did not. It struck Xiao-her as a good sign that the man was being so personal. The commissar went on to praise him: "You have studied Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought conscientiously. You have worked hard. The masses have a good impression of you. Of course, you must keep on being modest; modesty makes you progress," and so on. By the time the commissar stubbed out his cigarette, Xiao-her thought his promotion was in his pocket.

I adhered to this strategy right up to Mum's death, sharing experiences that I probably should have kept to myself, telling tales of drug-taking and STDs over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, graduating to infertility and marriage breakdown as I got older. There was never any condemnation from Mum, although she did gasp and shake her head sometimes. Whenever my life collapsed – which was often – I'd move back in with her, and no matter my age or what I was up to, she always put a hot-water bottle in my bed at night. [...] Mum advised, supported and steered me through my many disasters. Whether I'd said something stupid to someone at a party, made a mistake at work, fallen out with a colleague, was lonely, applying for a job, in a difficult relationship or spiked with drugs at a nightclub, she helped me make sense of the situation and find a way forward.

Once a political party has decided the path to governing is retaking the majority, not working with the existing majority, the incentives transform. Instead of cultivating a good relationship with your colleagues across the aisle, you need to destroy them, because you need to convince the voters to destroy them, too.

I can tell you,” my colleague went on, “of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn’t an anti-Nazi. He was just—a judge. In ’42 or ’43, early ’43, I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an ‘Aryan’ woman. This was ‘race injury,’ something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case at bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a ‘nonracial’ offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party ‘processing’ which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the ‘nonracial’ charge, in the judge’s opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom.” “And the judge?” “Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience—a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That’s how I heard about it.) After the ’44 Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don’t know.” I said nothing.

But the country’s grim history also helps explain why they are so determined not to give ground to the demonstrators in Hong Kong who want to replace the territory’s fake democracy with the real thing. Xi Jinping, China’s president, and his colleagues believe that the party’s control over the country is the only way of guaranteeing its stability.

The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away from it. Not when you’re in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn?

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict.

For his thirtieth and fortieth birthdays, Jobs had celebrated with the stars of Silicon Valley and other assorted celebrities. But when he turned fifty in 2005, after coming back from his cancer surgery, the surprise party that his wife arranged featured mainly his closest friends and professional colleagues. It was at the comfortable San Francisco home of some friends, and the great chef Alice Waters prepared salmon from Scotland

Senator Xenophon told Abbott at the end of 2014 that he needed to be very careful, because family members of the senator who were lifelong Liberal voters were not prepared to vote for the government. Xenophon told Abbott he was saying this as a critic, not an enemy, of the Liberal Party, and warned Abbott his colleagues would turn against him. ‘I’m not going to be rolled,’ Abbott fired back. ‘It will not happen.’ He wasn’t using his ears.

Now the Alinskyites had their hands on the federal money spigot. Ohlin and his colleagues directed the very first CAP grant into a program at Syracuse University through which Alinsky personally trained community activists.23 The federal government spent more than $300 billion on War on Poverty programs in the first five years. Much of this money went to street radicals such as Alinsky. During the Sixties, Alinsky’s under-the-radar influence was

Communist Romania almost everything was owned by the state. Democratic Romania quickly privatised its assets, selling them at bargain prices to the ex-communists, who alone grasped what was happening and collaborated to feather each other’s nests. Government companies that controlled national infrastructure and natural resources were sold to former communist officials at end-of-season prices while the party’s foot soldiers bought houses and apartments for pennies. Ion Iliescu was elected president of Romania, while his colleagues became ministers, parliament members, bank directors and multimillionaires. The new Romanian elite that controls the country to this day is composed mostly of former communists and their families. The masses who risked their necks in Timişoara and Bucharest settled for scraps, because they did not know how to cooperate and how to create an efficient organisation to look after their own interests.21

Albert Einstein was the most esteemed figure to publicly denounce Operation Paperclip. In an impassioned letter, written on behalf of his FAS colleagues, Einstein appealed directly to President Truman. “We hold these individuals to be potentially dangerous.... Their former eminence as Nazi Party members and supporters raises the issue of their fitness to become American citizens and hold key positions in American industrial, scientific and educational institutions.

Dr Singh’s general attitude towards corruption in public life, which he adopted through his career in government, seemed to me to be that he would himself maintain the highest standards of probity in public life, but would not impose this on others. In other words, he was himself incorruptible, and also ensured that no one in his immediate family ever did anything wrong, but he did not feel answerable for the misdemeanours of his colleagues and subordinates. In this instance, he felt even less because he was not the political authority that had appointed them to these ministerial positions. In practice, this meant that he turned a blind eye to the misdeeds of his ministers. He expected the Congress party leadership to deal with the black sheep in his government, just as he expected the allies to deal with their black sheep. While his conscience was always clear with respect to his own conduct, he believed everyone had to deal with their own conscience.

On fréquente les gens pendant des années, parfois des dizaines d'années, en s'habituant peu à peu à éviter les questions personnelles et les sujets réellement importants ; mais on garde l'espoir que plus tard, dans des circonstances plus favorables, on pourra justement aborder ces sujets, ces questions ; la perspective indéfiniment repoussée d'un mode de relation plus humain et plus complet ne s'efface jamais tout à fait, simplement parce que c'est impossible, parce qu'aucune relation humaine ne s'accommode d'un cadre définitivement étroit et figé. La perspective demeure, donc, d'une relation "authentique et profonde" ; elle demeure pendant des années, parfois des dizaines d'années, jusqu'à ce qu'un événement définitif et brutal (en général de l'ordre du décès) vienne vous apprendre qu'il est trop tard, que cette relation "authentique et profonde" dont on avait caressé l'image n'aurait pas lieu, elle non plus, pas davantage que les autres. (Les particules élémentaires, 3e partie, chapitre 1)

After so many years, I was used to it. It was just another remark in a long, long list of offensive, obnoxious, ignorant, destructive things said to me and others by people with some power or sway. But the truth of the matter is this: It wasn’t OK. And it wasn’t OK for me to be OK with it. For me to put up with it. To laugh it off, to excuse it, to use it as a cocktail-party tale. It wasn’t OK for me. And it isn’t OK for my amazing nieces, for my brave colleagues, for the women coming up behind me.

Chacon retired in July 2014, and at his going-away party said the one thing he’d never miss was pulling another dead child out of the water. He meant it as a joke, but it left his colleagues stunned. To this day, he suffers from post-traumatic stress. He will probably have it the rest of his life. He sometimes thinks that the reason he and his wife were never able to have children despite years of trying, specialist after specialist offering no solution, was so he’d never have to know a parent’s grief.

Also consider the frustratingly common practice of forwarding an e-mail to one or more colleagues, labeled with a short open-ended interrogative, such as: “Thoughts?” These e-mails take the sender only a handful of seconds to write but can command many minutes (if not hours, in some cases) of time and attention from their recipients to work toward a coherent response. A little more care in crafting the message by the sender could reduce the overall time spent by all parties by a significant fraction. So

Apropos of Mein Kampf, I remember an amusing incident which Ishall relate here, though it is anticipating my story by several years. It took place at the Nazi Party Congress at Nurnberg in 1927. I had been a member of the Party for two-and-a-half years, and presented the annual report. In the course of it I quoted a few phrases from Mein Kampf and this caused a certain sensation. That evening, at dinner with several colleagues Feder Kaufmann Koch and others, they asked me if I had really read the book, with which not one of them seemed to be familiar I admitted having quoted some significant passages from it without bothering my head about the context. This caused general amusement and it was agreed that the first person who joined us who had read Mein Kampf should pay the bill for us all. Gregor answer when he arrived was a resounding no. Goebbels shook his head guiltily, Goering burst into loud laughter and Count Reventlow excused himself on the ground that he had no time. No body had read Mein Kampf, so everybody had to pay his own bill.

If being transgender were a job, no-one would apply. Imagine actually applying to be an outcast everywhere you go, feeling out of place even inside your own body, even when looking in a mirror, at old family photo albums, being continually denied by family members you held dear, being barely recognized or even acknowledged by old acquaintances, school or college friends, and taking the brunt of bigotry and spitefulness from colleagues and supervisors? Does being excluded from family events, work parties, and being constantly attacked by religious groups and people sound like fun? How about constantly wondering if you will wake up with civil rights the next morning, or if you will be arrested or beaten up or murdered in the streets by someone you don’t know, or in your own home by someone you do know? How about the likelihood that your family would dress your dead body as someone else they would prefer you to have been for your memorial service, while dead-naming you and disrespecting the person you were and the things you had accomplished in your life? Sound like the job for you? Apply within. If there was a CHOICE, then my dears, EVERYONE would walk away.

In his essay on Clemenceau in Great Contemporaries, Churchill had commended the way the Frenchman was ‘fighting, fighting all the way’ through life.254 Over the next five months Churchill had to fight the Government whips, the Prime Minister, the press (especially The Times), Conservative Central Office, his backbench colleagues, the Security Services and his own constituency association. In some parliamentary divisions he led a party of three, and sometimes two. Yet in that same desolate period he showed the greatest moral courage of his life, and laid the foundations of his future wartime leadership.

The thing about being barren is that you're not allowed to get away from it. Not when you're in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it, all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine?

But the Congress also played an insidious role in creating the circumstances that led to the demolition of the mosque. Though Rahul Gandhi once grandly claimed that the mosque would never have been brought down had a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family been at the helm of government, it was his father, Rajiv Gandhi, who on the request of the VHP first ordered the locks on the Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid complex to be opened in 1985. And in 1989, with one eye on the elections, it was Rajiv who sent his home minister, Buta Singh, to participate in the ‘shilanyas’, or the symbolic temple foundation laying ceremony, at a site near the Babri Masjid but outside of what he understood to be the disputed site. After his assassination in 1991 it became the responsibility of Narasimha Rao to safeguard the mosque from demolition. The Liberhan Report said Prime Minister Rao and his government were ‘day-dreaming’; his own party colleagues and those who met him in the days leading up to 6 December say his inaction was deliberate. Veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar even went so far as to suggest in his memoirs that Rao ‘sat at a puja when the kar sevaks began pulling down the mosque and rose only when the last stone had been removed’.

Pašić dealt intelligently with this delicate situation. He made personal overtures to individual conspirators with a view to disrupting the formation of an anti-government coalition. Despite protests from Radical Party colleagues, he backed a generous funding package for the army that made up some of the ground lost since the departure of King Father Milan; he publicly acknowledged the legitimacy of the coup of 1903 (a matter of great symbolic importance to the conspirators) and opposed efforts to bring the regicides to trial. At the same time, however, he worked steadily towards curtailing their presence in public life.

SECTION IV: CALIBRATED QUESTIONS Prepare three to five calibrated questions to reveal value to you and your counterpart and identify and overcome potential deal killers. Effective negotiators look past their counterparts’ stated positions (what the party demands) and delve into their underlying motivations (what is making them want what they want). Motivations are what they are worried about and what they hope for, even lust for. Figuring out what the other party is worried about sounds simple, but our basic human expectations about negotiation often get in the way. Most of us tend to assume that the needs of the other side conflict with our own. We tend to limit our field of vision to our issues and problems, and forget that the other side has its own unique issues based on its own unique worldview. Great negotiators get past these blinders by being relentlessly curious about what is really motivating the other side. Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has a great quote that sums up this concept: “You must accept the reality of other people. You think that reality is up for negotiation, that we think it’s whatever you say it is. You must accept that we are as real as you are; you must accept that you are not God.” There will be a small group of “What” and “How” questions that you will find yourself using in nearly every situation. Here are a few of them: What are we trying to accomplish? How is that worthwhile? What’s the core issue here? How does that affect things? What’s the biggest challenge you face? How does this fit into what the objective is? QUESTIONS TO IDENTIFY BEHIND-THE-TABLE DEAL KILLERS When implementation happens by committee, the support of that committee is key. You’ll want to tailor your calibrated questions to identify and unearth the motivations of those behind the table, including: How does this affect the rest of your team? How on board are the people not on this call? What do your colleagues see as their main challenges in this area? QUESTIONS TO IDENTIFY AND DIFFUSE DEAL-

Specialisation, accompanied by exchange, is the source of economic prosperity. Here, in my own words, is what a modern version of Smithism claims. First, the spontaneous and voluntary exchange of goods and services leads to a division of labour in which people specialise in what they are good at doing. Second, this in turn leads to gains from trade for each party to a transaction, because everybody is doing what he is most productive at and has the chance to learn, practise and even mechanise his chosen task. Individuals can thus use and improve their own tacit and local knowledge in a way that no expert or ruler could. Third, gains from trade encourage more specialisation, which encourages more trade, in a virtuous circle. The greater the specialisation among producers, the greater is the diversification of consumption: in moving away from self-sufficiency people get to produce fewer things, but to consume more. Fourth, specialisation inevitably incentivises innovation, which is also a collaborative process driven by the exchange and combination of ideas. Indeed, most innovation comes about through the recombination of existing ideas for how to make or organise things. The more people trade and the more they divide labour, the more they are working for each other. The more they work for each other, the higher their living standards. The consequence of the division of labour is an immense web of cooperation among strangers: it turns potential enemies into honorary friends. A woollen coat, worn by a day labourer, was (said Smith) ‘the produce of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser . . .’ In parting with money to buy a coat, the labourer was not reducing his wealth. Gains from trade are mutual; if they were not, people would not voluntarily engage in trade. The more open and free the market, the less opportunity there is for exploitation and predation, because the easier it is for consumers to boycott the predators and for competitors to whittle away their excess profits. In its ideal form, therefore, the free market is a device for creating networks of collaboration among people to raise each other’s living standards, a device for coordinating production and a device for communicating information about needs through the price mechanism. Also a device for encouraging innovation. It is the very opposite of the rampant and selfish individualism that so many churchmen and others seem to think it is. The market is a system of mass cooperation. You compete with rival producers, sure, but you cooperate with your customers, your suppliers and your colleagues. Commerce both needs and breeds trust.

One thing that has surprised Julie about going through the process of watching herself die is how vivid her world has become. Everything that she used to take for granted produces a sense of revelation, as if she were a child again. Tastes- the sweetness of a strawberry, it’s juice dripping onto her chin; a buttery pastry melting in her mouth. Smells - flowers on a front lawn, a colleague‘s perfume, seaweed washed up on the shore, Matt’s sweaty body in bed at night. Sounds – the strings on a cello, the screech of a car, her nephew’s laughter. Experiences - dancing at a birthday party, people-watching at Starbucks, buying a cute dress, opening the mail. All of this, no matter how mundane, delights her to no end. She’s become hyper-present. When people delude themselves into believing they have all the time in the world, she noticed, they get lazy. She hadn’t expected to experience this pleasure in her grief, to find it invigorating, in a way. But even as she’s dying, she’s realized, life goes on - even as the cancer invades her body, she still checks Twitter. At first she thought, why would I waste even ten minutes of the time I have left checking Twitter? And then she thought, why wouldn’t I? I like Twitter! She also tries not to dwell on what she’s losing. “I can breathe fine now, “Julie says, “but it’ll get harder, and I’ll grieve for that. Until then, I breathe.

But under the beards--and this was K.'s real discovery­ --badges of various sizes and colors gleamed on their coat­ collars. They all wore those badges as far he could see. They were all colleagues, these ostensible parties of the right and left, and as he turned round suddently he saw the same badges on the coat collar of the Examining Magistrate, who was sitting quietly watching the scene with his hands on his knees. "So!" cried K. flinging his arms in the air, his sudden enlightenment had to break out, "every man jack of you is an official, I see, you are yourselves the corrupt agents of whom I have been speaking, you've all come rushing here to listen and nose out what you can about me, making a pretense of party divisions, and half of you applauded merely to lead me on, you wanted some practice in fooling an innocent man.

More notable perhaps were the names of those who were not from the Congress. These included two representatives of the world of commerce and one representative of the Sikhs. Three others were lifelong adversaries of the Congress. These were R. K. Shanmukham Chetty, a Madras businessman who possessed one of the best financial minds in India; B. R. Ambedkar, a brilliant legal scholar and an ‘Untouchable’ by caste; and Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, a leading Bengal politician who belonged (at this time) to the Hindu Mahasabha. All three had collaborated with the rulers while the Congress men served time in British jails. But now Nehru and his colleagues wisely put aside these differences. Gandhi had reminded them that ‘freedom comes to India, not to the Congress’, urging the formation of a Cabinet that included the ablest men regardless of party affiliation.6

As Boris Yeltsin was to acknowledge many years later, in a speech to the Hungarian Parliament on November 11th 1992, ‘The tragedy of 1956 . . . will forever remain an indelible spot on the Soviet regime.’ But that was nothing when compared with the cost the Soviets had imposed on their victims. Thirty-three years later, on June 16th 1989, in a Budapest celebrating its transition to freedom, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians took part in another ceremonial reburial: this time of Imre Nagy and his colleagues. One of the speakers over Nagy’s grave was the young Viktor Orbán, future Prime Minister of his country. ‘It is a direct consequence of the bloody repression of the Revolution,’ he told the assembled crowds, ‘that we have had to assume the burden of insolvency and reach for a way out of the Asiatic dead end into which we were pushed. Truly, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party robbed today’s youth of its future in 1956.

When we arrived in England, we could almost feel the excitement in the air. Banners, pictures, and other decorations hung everywhere, and the streets were packed with people waiting to celebrate the wedding of the century. The formal party in honor of the royal match was held on the evening of Monday, July 27--two nights before the wedding. That day I felt nervous with anticipation as I lunched with a friend and went to the hairdresser. Pat met Exxon colleagues for lunch near their office in Mayfair. As he described our plans for the upcoming ball and wedding, Pat began to feel totally overwhelmed by the importance and glamour of these royal events. So my darling husband excused himself, walked over to Green Park just across from the palace, and simply collapsed with nervous strain to nap on a quiet patch of grass for the afternoon. I’ve always envied his ability to tune out and relax when he’s under stress; I get tense and can’t eat or sleep.

It’s not only working parents who are looking for more hours in the day; people without children are also overworked, maybe to an even greater extent. When I was in business school, I attended a Women in Consulting panel with three speakers: two married women with children and one single woman without children. After the married women spoke about how hard it was to balance their lives, the single woman interjected that she was tired of people not taking her need to have a life seriously. She felt that her colleagues were always rushing off to be with their families, leaving her to pick up the slack. She argued, “My coworkers should understand that I need to go to a party tonight—and this is just as legitimate as their kids’ soccer game—because going to a party is the only way I might actually meet someone and start a family so I can have a soccer game to go to one day!” I often quote this story to make sure single employees know that they, too, have every right to a full life.

On my fourth day in the sick quarters I had just been detailed to the night shift when the chief doctor rushed in and asked me to volunteer for medical duties in another camp containing typhus patients. Against the urgent advice of my friends (and despite the fact that almost none of my colleagues offered their services), I decided to volunteer. I knew that in a working party I would die in a short time. But if I had to die there might at least be some sense in my death. I thought that it would doubtless be more to the purpose to try and help my comrades as a doctor than to vegetate or finally lose my life as the unproductive laborer that I was then. For me this was simple mathematics, not sacrifice. But secretly, the warrant officer from the sanitation squad had ordered that the two doctors who had volunteered for the typhus camp should be “taken care of” till they left. We looked so weak that he feared that he might have two additional corpses on his hands, rather than two doctors.

Business was booming and people were getting rich. Many bureaucrats enjoyed the new sense of power they had over their fellow citizens, and became known as kleine, or small, Hitlers. Hitler and members of the Nazi Party continued in their insane quest to become the leaders of a unified Europe. Never mind that this unification would be by force and that it would draw the entire world into another major catastrophe. Already Jews and others, who were considered undesirables by the Nazi régime, were fleeing the country.... That is, if they could afford the passage out. Hitler’s expansionary philosophy was apparent, but no one would risk speaking up. Even friends could not be trusted, and so it became a time of great anxiety. Fellow workers turned in colleagues if they thought it could advance their own position. In some cases, even family members could not be trusted! Hitler said “By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell, or an extremely wretched life as paradise.

On paper, at least, none of this would necessarily stop us from getting a stimulus bill passed. After all, Democrats enjoyed a seventy-seven-seat majority in the House and a seventeen-seat majority in the Senate. But even in the best of circumstances, trying to get the largest emergency spending bill in history through Congress in record time would be a little like getting a python to swallow a cow. I also had to contend with a bit of institutionalized procedural mischief—the Senate filibuster—which in the end would prove to be the most chronic political headache of my presidency. The filibuster isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. Instead, it came into being by happenstance: In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr urged the Senate to eliminate the “motion to proceed”—a standard parliamentary provision that allows a simple majority of any legislature to end debate on a piece of business and call for a vote. (Burr, who seems never to have developed the habit of thinking things through, reportedly considered the rule a waste of time.) It didn’t take long for senators to figure out that without a formal way to end debate, any one of them could bring Senate business to a halt—and thereby extract all sorts of concessions from frustrated colleagues—simply by talking endlessly and refusing to surrender the floor. In 1917, the Senate curbed the practice by adopting “cloture,” allowing a vote of two-thirds of senators present to end a filibuster. For the next fifty years the filibuster was used only sparingly—most notably by southern Democrats attempting to block anti-lynching and fair-employment bills or other legislation that threatened to shake up Jim Crow. Gradually, though, the filibuster became more routinized and easier to maintain, making it a more potent weapon, a means for the minority party to get its way. The mere threat of a filibuster was often enough to derail a piece of legislation. By the 1990s, as battle lines between Republicans and Democrats hardened, whichever party was in the minority could—and would—block any bill not to their liking, so long as they remained unified and had at least the 41 votes needed to keep a filibuster from being overridden.

Kira looks at the document, sees the name of the firm representing the other party. And starts to laugh. Her colleague applied for a job there once, and didn’t get it. “Okay, but the fact that you want to win this particular case . . . that wouldn’t be because you just happen to hate this particular firm . . . ?” Kira mutters. Her colleague grabs her over the desk, her eyes flashing: “No, I don’t just want to win, Kira. I want to crush them! I want to give them an existential crisis. I want them to walk out of the negotiation room and think that they might like to move to the coast and renovate an old school and open a bed-and-breakfast. I want to hurt those bastards so badly that they start meditating and trying to FIND THEMSELVES! They’ll turn vegetarian and be wearing socks with sandals by the time I’m finished with them!” Kira sighs and laughs. “Okay, okay, okay . . . give me the rest of the file and let’s take a look . . .” “Socks with SANDALS, Kira! I want them to start growing their own tomatoes! I want to ruin their self-confidence until they stop being lawyers and try to be HAPPY and shit like that instead! Okay?” Kira promises. They close the door. They’re going to win. They always do.

Many psychologists would also agree that introverts and extroverts work differently. Extroverts tend to tackle assignments quickly. They make fast (sometimes rash) decisions, and are comfortable multitasking and risk-taking. They enjoy “the thrill of the chase” for rewards like money and status. Introverts often work more slowly and deliberately. They like to focus on one task at a time and can have mighty powers of concentration. They’re relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame. Our personalities also shape our social styles. Extroverts are the people who will add life to your dinner party and laugh generously at your jokes. They tend to be assertive, dominant, and in great need of company. Extroverts think out loud and on their feet; they prefer talking to listening, rarely find themselves at a loss for words, and occasionally blurt out things they never meant to say. They’re comfortable with conflict, but not with solitude. Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

[T]hat afternoon, Sergei Lavrov called me for the second time during the crisis. [...] “We have three demands,” he said. “What are they?” I asked. “The first two are that the Georgians sign the no-use-of-force pledge and that their troops return to barracks,” he told me. “Done,” I answered. [...] But then Sergei said, “The other demand is just between us. Misha Saakashvili has to go.” I couldn’t believe my ears and I reacted out of instinct, not analysis. “Sergei, the secretary of state of the United States does not have a conversation with the Russian foreign minister about overthrowing a democratically elected president,” I said. “The third condition has just become public because I’m going to call everyone I can and tell them that Russia is demanding the overthrow of the Georgian president.” “I said it was between us,” he repeated. “No, it’s not between us. Everyone is going to know.” The conversation ended. I called Steve Hadley to tell him about the Russian demand. Then I called the British, the French, and several others. That afternoon the UN Security Council was meeting. I asked our representative to inform the Council as well. Lavrov was furious, saying that he’d never had a colleague divulge the contents of a diplomatic conversation. I felt I had no choice. If the Georgians wanted to punish Saakashvili for the war, they would have a chance to do it through their own constitutional processes. But the Russians had no right to insist on his removal. The whole thing had an air of the Soviet period, when Moscow had controlled the fate of leaders throughout Eastern Europe. I was certainly not going to be party to a return to those days [688].

Extroverts tend to tackle assignments quickly. They make fast (sometimes rash) decisions, and are comfortable multitasking and risk-taking. They enjoy “the thrill of the chase” for rewards like money and status. Introverts often work more slowly and deliberately. They like to focus on one task at a time and can have mighty powers of concentration. They’re relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame. Our personalities also shape our social styles. Extroverts are the people who will add life to your dinner party and laugh generously at your jokes. They tend to be assertive, dominant, and in great need of company. Extroverts think out loud and on their feet; they prefer talking to listening, rarely find themselves at a loss for words, and occasionally blurt out things they never meant to say. They’re comfortable with conflict, but not with solitude. Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions. A few things introverts are not: The word introvert is not a synonym for hermit or misanthrope. Introverts can be these things, but most are perfectly friendly. One of the most humane phrases in the English language—“Only connect!”—was written by the distinctly introverted E. M. Forster in a novel exploring the question of how to achieve “human love at its height.” Nor are introverts necessarily shy. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not.

Mueller kicked off the meeting by pulling out a piece of paper with some notes. The attorney general and his aides believed they noticed something worrisome. Mueller’s hands shook as he held the paper. His voice was shaky, too. This was not the Bob Mueller everyone knew. As he made some perfunctory introductory remarks, Barr, Rosenstein, O’Callaghan, and Rabbitt couldn’t help but worry about Mueller’s health. They were taken aback. As Barr would later ask his colleagues, “Did he seem off to you?” Later, close friends would say they noticed Mueller had changed dramatically, but a member of Mueller’s team would insist he had no medical problems. Mueller quickly turned the meeting over to his deputies, a notable handoff. Zebley went first, summing up the Russian interference portion of the investigation. He explained that the team had already shared most of its findings in two major indictments in February and July 2018. Though they had virtually no chance of bringing the accused to trial in the United States, Mueller’s team had indicted thirteen Russian nationals who led a troll farm to flood U.S. social media with phony stories to sow division and help Trump. They also indicted twelve Russian military intelligence officers who hacked internal Democratic Party emails and leaked them to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The Trump campaign had no known role in either operation. Zebley explained they had found insufficient evidence to suggest a conspiracy, “no campaign finance [violations], no issues found. . . . We have questions about [Paul] Manafort, but we’re very comfortable saying there was no collusion, no conspiracy.” Then Quarles talked about the obstruction of justice portion. “We’re going to follow the OLC opinion and conclude it wasn’t appropriate for us to make a final determination as to whether or not there was a crime,” he said. “We’re going to report the facts, the analysis, and leave it there. We are not going to say we would indict but for the OLC opinion.

Patronising women is another manoeuvre, an infamous example being then British prime minister David Cameron’s ‘Calm down, dear’ to Labour MP Angela Eagle in 2011.48 In the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) 2016 global study on sexism, violence and harassment against female politicians, one MP from a European parliament said ‘if a woman speaks loudly in parliament she is “shushed” with a finger to the lips, as one does with children. That never happens when a man speaks loudly’.49 Another noted that she is ‘constantly asked – even by male colleagues in my own party – if what I want to say is very important, if I could refrain from taking the floor.’ Some tactics are more brazen. Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi told the Guardian that male colleagues use intimidation to frighten female MPs into silence – and when that fails, ‘The leadership cuts our microphones off’.50 Highlighting the hidden gender angle of having a single person (most often a man) in charge of speaking time in parliament, one MP from a country in sub-Saharan Africa (the report only specified regions so the women could remain anonymous) told the IPU that the Speaker had pressured one of her female colleagues for sex. Following her refusal, ‘he had never again given her the floor in parliament’. It doesn’t necessarily even take a sexual snub for a Speaker to refuse women the floor: ‘During my first term in parliament, parliamentary authorities always referred to statements by men and gave priority to men when giving the floor to speakers,’ explained one MP from a country in Asia. The IPU report concluded that sexism, harassment and violence against female politicians was a ‘phenomenon that knew no boundaries and exists to different degrees in every country’. The report found that 66% of female parliamentarians were regularly subjected to misogynistic remarks from their male colleagues, ranging from the degrading (‘you would be even better in a porn movie’) to the threatening (‘she needs to be raped so that she knows what foreigners do’).

Earth (481-640) People with this personality type are likely to become successful leaders. You tend to be more disciplined and careful at planning tasks. Loyalty and trust are important equations in your relationships hence they prove to be your strength in hard times. You respect others and keep people united which makes people flourish under your leadership. Earth signs are efficient decision makers hence always remain firm on the step they took. Fire: (400-300) Fire people are smart enthusiastic and energetic to be around. You are very competitive and curious, and more often very passionate about your goals and desires. Trusting people with a job or any important personal task is hard hence making emotional connections are difficult for you. making friends or getting a lover, your life is full of drama and there’s always a lot happening around you. You are intelligent and always find new ways to do things Water (160-320) Water people are kind and empathetic but sensitive. And you sometimes tend to become people pleasers. being quite impulsive and always in a hurry, you make decisions haphazardly. Water people are shy and introverted while partying around with friends on a weekend would be the last thing you want to do. You dread small talk and expressing yourself to a group of people is quite a demanding job. People feel relaxed in your presence you bring out the best in them. Decision-making can be demanding and you are sometimes regretful of overthinking and hence not capable of finding a firm decision. Air: (0-160) You have quite an entrancing personality. People are naturally drawn towards you and find your company comforting and friendly. Air signs are naturally smart and quite efficient in their workplace. While using your challenges and opportunities wisely you are likely to have great careers. you are good at advising your colleagues. But being bound in a relationship sometimes doesn’t seem to help you, rather you respect open free yet intimate emotional connections. Air people who are artistic and creative always look at things from a unique lens. So now you know your element.

The thing about being barren is that you're not allowed to get away from it. Not when you're in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope. At the time, I resented the fact that it was always seen as my fault, that I was the one letting the side down. But as the speed with which he managed to impregnate Anna demonstrates, there was never any problem with Tom’s virility. I was wrong to suggest that we should share the blame; it was all down to me. Lara, my best friend since university, had two children in two years: a boy first and then a girl. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want to hear anything about them. I didn’t want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to me after a while. There was a girl at work who told me—casually, as though she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction—that she’d recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much less traumatic than the surgical one she’d had when she was at university. I couldn’t speak to her after that, I could barely look at her. Things became awkward in the office; people noticed. Tom didn’t feel the way I did. It wasn’t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn’t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did—I’m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. “We’re happy,” he used to say to me. “Why can’t we just go on being happy?” He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.

If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country. In fact that was why he had been put on the ticket in the first place. His first congressional race in 1946, against a pleasant liberal incumbent named Jerry Voorhis, was marked by red-baiting so savage that it took Voorhis completely by surprise. Upon getting elected, Nixon wasted no time in asking for membership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was the committee member who first spotted the contradictions in Hiss’s seemingly impeccable case; in later years he was inclined to think of the case as one of his greatest victories, in which he had challenged and defeated a man who was not what he seemed, and represented the hated Eastern establishment. His career, though, was riddled with contradictions. Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens. Yet by the end of his career, he became the man who opened the door to normalized relations with China (perhaps, thought some critics, he was the only politician in America who could do that without being attacked by Richard Nixon), and he was a pal of both the Soviet and Chinese Communist leadership. If he later surprised many long-standing critics with his trips to Moscow and Peking, he had shown his genuine diplomatic skills much earlier in the way he balanced the demands of the warring factions within his own party. He never asked to be well liked or popular; he asked only to be accepted. There were many Republicans who hated him, particularly in California. Earl Warren feuded with him for years. Even Bill Knowland, the state’s senior senator and an old-fashioned reactionary, despised him. At the 1952 convention, Knowland had remained loyal to Warren despite Nixon’s attempts to help Eisenhower in the California delegation. When Knowland was asked to give a nominating speech for Nixon, he was not pleased: “I have to nominate the dirty son of a bitch,” he told friends. Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.

If Democrats were just unusually good at discovering the truth, that would explain why Democrats converge on one set of logically unrelated beliefs, but it wouldn’t explain why Republicans (or non-Democrats in general) converge on the opposite beliefs. We’d instead expect that Republicans would tend to have randomly distributed and disparate beliefs about most of these topics. We’d expect Democrats’ beliefs to be positively correlated with one another, but Republicans’ beliefs would have few or no positive correlations. We’d expect Democrats’ beliefs to form a cluster, but not Republicans’ beliefs. I suppose the Democrat objector might respond it’s not just that Democrats are unusually good at discovering the truth, but that Republicans are unusually inclined to form false beliefs. (Some of my academic colleagues, who are unrepentant hooligans, will laugh here and say, yes, that’s precisely it.) It’s possible that this is true. But the evidence speaks against it. If we knew that one party had high-information voters while the other had low-information ones, that fact would tend to support the hypothetical Democrat’s argument. Yet while the average Republican is slightly better informed than the average Democrat, the differences in knowledge are not staggering.

RT had paid him $45,000 for his appearance. His colleagues had warned him that taking Kremlin gold would fatally compromise him, and they also thought that he didn’t care. (Flynn’s twenty-seven-day stint as Trump’s White House national security adviser ended after he lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russians.) Stein said her campaign paid for her trip to Moscow, but RT paid her back. It ran more than one hundred stories on its American channel supporting her bid for the White House, amplifying her positions—“a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for war”—which reliably corresponded with the party line of the Internet Research Agency. “She’s a Russian asset—I mean, totally,” Clinton said three years after the election, an intriguing and incendiary charge.

This “do as I say, not as I do” attitude was one of the first things the producer noticed when he started working for F& F. Anti-marijuana segments were a layup on the show. Then he headed to a house party with colleagues for the first time and saw half the staff out on the balcony getting high. “Okay,” he said to himself, “so we don’t really believe all this stuff. We just tell other people to believe it.

It is incontestable that the reality and credibility of the world — and therefore its equilibrium — rests largely in peoples' names. Upon waking each morning, we all confusedly feel the need to confirm that today's world is the same as yesterday's. This comfort can be found in the newspapers, through the names of people who continue to say, do, and write the very same things. The need for this reassurance is so urgent that it leads to exaggerated illusions. Our collective impression is that the dead under the heading 'Obituaries' are always the same, unless at that moment we have some friend or relation who is very sick. When we go out, doormen, newspaper boys, and colleagues at work call us by our names, and they haven't changed theirs. Nor have the names of third parties to whom one necessarily alludes in everyday conversation altered.

Also consider the frustratingly common practice of forwarding an e-mail to one or more colleagues, labeled with a short open-ended interrogative, such as: “Thoughts?” These e-mails take the sender only a handful of seconds to write but can command many minutes (if not hours, in some cases) of time and attention from their recipients to work toward a coherent response. A little more care in crafting the message by the sender could reduce the overall time spent by all parties by a significant fraction. So why are these easily avoidable and time-sucking e-mails so common? From the sender’s perspective, they’re easier. It’s a way to clear something out of their inbox—at least, temporarily—with a minimum amount of energy invested.

I’m giving you the opportunity to be involved in a very high-quality private catering event. Isn’t that something you’re supposed to be training for?’ Nathan hissed. ‘I don’t care what Maude may or may not feel. This is business.’ The door was opened by an attractive middle-aged woman wearing a crisp grey pencil skirt, forest-green blouse and black stilettos, standing in the doorway. ‘Ah, Mr DaCosta? The catering? Perfect timing.’ Lila suddenly felt dowdy in her catering whites. ‘And your colleague? Welcome. I’m Sarah, the housekeeper; I’ll show you where to set up.’ They followed Sarah into the house, her high heels clicking on a perfect white marble floor. Lila wondered if she ever lost her balance on such a slippery surface, especially in those heels. A housekeeper wearing what looked suspiciously like Louboutins wasn’t quite what Lila had expected. She was cross with Nathan and wished she’d never come, even though the extra money was useful. Still, she thought to herself, she was here now, and Nathan was her boss. So she was stuck here. ‘Just checking it’s a party of twenty?’ Nathan asked her as they traversed the long hall, hung with old-fashioned oil portraits intermixed with modern paintings. Just that wall of art would probably pay for my flat, Lila thought, admiring

His party had given up on liberalism. They didn’t even use the word anymore. They said instead that they were “progressives,” as if any movement into the future was necessarily better than the status quo. The Left had an illiberal streak that no one seemed willing to talk about, and Frank could see it in his colleagues’ reaction when he refused to join in the rending of garments over advocating invasion.

In 1944, Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues and, in 1960, Angus Campbell and his colleagues suggested that partisans who identify with groups associated with the opposing party would be less likely to vote (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944; Campbell et al. 1960). Lipset ([1960] 1963) went so far as to call these cross-pressured voters “politically impotent,” suggesting that “the more pressures brought to bear on individuals or groups which operate in opposing directions, the more likely are prospective voters to withdraw from the situation by ‘losing interest’ and not making a choice” (211).

When we first started dating, he introduced me to all his friends and colleagues as his little firecracker. That's what he started calling me after our third date, when he brought me to a Redskins party at his friend Eric's place. Eric had decided to make buffalo chili, but, in what became clear to both me and everyone else at the party, he had no idea what he was doing. Two hours into the party, after all of us had blown through the bags of tortilla chips and pretzels, Eric was still chopping red peppers. Determined not to let a room of fifteen people go hungry, I rolled up my sleeves, marched into the kitchen, and grabbed my knife. "Okay, Bobby Flay," I said as I wielded my knife. "Time to get this show on the road." I chopped and minced and crushed at rapid-fire speed, and in no time, dinner was served. "Get a load of this firecracker," Eric said as he watched me work my magic. After that, the name sort of stuck. For a while, the nickname seemed like a good thing. Every time I would rail against fad diets or champion the importance of sustainable agriculture or lament the lack of food options in inner cities, Adam would laugh and say, "That's my little firecracker." He made me feel special, as if I were a vital part of his life. His parents were the only people from whom he seemed to hide me, and though it bothered me a little, I understood. I was the anti-Sandy. That's what made me attractive. But he hasn't called me his little firecracker in what feels like months now, and lately I feel as if he's hiding me from everyone. When did this little firecracker become a grenade?

At some point in my high school days, one of my debate colleagues, a kid from a less exalted part of Johnson County, told me he planned to be a Democrat in his upcoming political career (all debaters imagine themselves as future politicians) because that was the party of the working class, and there would always be more workers than there were rich people. After all these years I remember the moment he said this with the perfect, frozen clarity that the brain reserves for great shocks: Pearl Harbor, 9/11. The idea stunned me. Class conflict between workers and businessmen? Could this be true? The thought had simply never occurred to me before.

Before he boarded the train, he wrote to Irwin once more urging him to stay Bhagat Singh’s execution. ‘Popular opinion,’ he remarked, ‘rightly or wrongly demands commutation. When there is no principle at stake, it is often a duty to respect it.’ Gandhi had been assured by the ‘revolutionary party’ that if the lives of Singh and his colleagues were spared, it would stay its hand. Execution was ‘an irretrievable act’, Gandhi told the viceroy. Therefore, if he thought there was ‘the slightest chance of error of judgment’, he should ‘suspend for further review an act that is beyond recall’.

Nehru agreed to be Congress president in 1936, the crucial year leading up to the elections mandated by the new Act. But he was clear in his own mind that the real leader of his party, and his country-in-the-making, was Gandhi. As he wrote to an English friend: ‘The only person who represents India, more than anyone has done or can do, is Gandhi. I may differ from him in a multitude of things but that is a matter between him and me and our colleagues. So far as I am concerned he is India in a peculiar measure and he is the undoubted leader of my country. If anybody wants to know what India wants, let him go to Gandhi'.

fellow colleagues who are temporarily short of time, and also speakers, singers (with stage fright), and examination candidates. . . . One lady likes to use the medication (c. 2 x 2 tablets) before parties; another successfully on particularly demanding working days (up to 3 x 2 tablets daily).

One thing that has surprised Julie about going through the process of watching herself die is how vivid her world has become. Everything that she used to take for granted produces a sense of revelation, as if she were a child again. Tastes - the sweetness of a strawberry, its juice dripping onto her chin; a buttery pastry melting in her mouth, Smells - flowers on a front lawn, a colleague's perfume, seaweed washed up on the shore, Matt's sweaty body in bed at night. Sounds - the strings on a cello, the screech of a car, her nephew's laughter. Experiences - dancing at a birthday party, people-watching at Starbucks, buying a cute dress, opening the mail. All of this, no matter how mundane, delights her to no end. She's become hyper-present. When people delude themselves into believing they have all the time in the world, she's noticed, they get lazy. p310

This is a big one. One of the most prominent sources of stress in peoples lives is the worry of things which MIGHT happen. We can all recall times when we have lost sleep over seemingly menial things. Will my new work colleagues like me? Will I fail my exam next week? What if bad weather ruins my garden party this weekend? The list is endless. However, continually fretting about things does us no good. It will only result in anxiety and unnecessary internal suffering, which in turn will affect our daily lives in a negative manner. Instead, and as

simpler approach is to simply examine the designs of the districts. As Justice O’Connor observed in Shaw v. Reno, when it comes to redistricting, looks matter. This approach is especially appropriate in states in which one party has a substantial advantage, for example, the challenge to Maryland’s decision to eliminate one of its two Republican districts as challenged in Lamone v. Benisek.110 The approach may also be more reliable than some that rely on statistical analyses when there are few districts. Wang and his colleagues suggest this approach for states with two to six districts.111 However, some partisan gerrymanders do not have extraordinary-looking districts and some strange shapes result from concerns about something other than party, such as in Maryland where figure 4.3 shows how lines were drawn to maintain two majority-black districts.

Sandra Day O’Connor, the only recent judge to have served as a legislator, understood the inherently political nature of redistricting and refused to join her colleagues who wanted to undo plans that advantaged one party. Acknowledging that partisanship is endemic in the key partisan decisions surrounding new districts, how can a judge determine when there is too much partisanship? Attempts

They talked about the guilty party. They talked about the mastermind behind the whole grisly plot that the police and the media were currently trying to unravel, and there was no way they wouldn’t because it was simply too juicy a story to not gossip about.

They also broke the golden rule he had just given them. They talked about the guilty party. They talked about the mastermind behind the whole grisly plot that the police and the media were currently trying to unravel, and there was no way they wouldn’t because it was simply too juicy a story to not gossip about.

Action means something. Rude people can make a bigger difference in the world than nice people.” “I really don’t want to meet any more of your friends.” “Always the joker.” Patrick shook his head again. “Ethically rude people change the world.” “Here we go. Patrick the Philosopher.” Hunter shook his head. “Ethically rude people?” “The ones that are willing to be disliked to get what’s best. The people that are willing to risk everything for something they think is right, and they don’t care if you like them or not. Take your current client—voted against his ethics so he didn’t lose his backers. He’s not ethically rude; he’s being nice, agreeable and likable. But his party room colleague, Cindy Mendel, went against all the odds, everyone, including her own council, to do what she thought was ethically right.” “I didn’t realize being likable was so bad.” “Someone who chooses to be likable, instead of what’s ethically correct, is actually being selfish and thinking about themselves. They’re choosing particular choices because of the way they will feel about it.” “Being nice isn’t all bad.” “Of course not. The world needs nice people, but it also needs ethically rude people. They’re the people that get stuff done. It’s like that saying by James Freeman Clarke— ‘A politician looks to the next election, while a statesman looks to the next

Austin Ranney and Willmoore Kendall wrote in defense of Van Buren’s model of parties and warned their colleagues not to take social cohesion for granted. “By sustaining and refreshing the consensus on which our society and governmental system are based,” they argued, the American party system “makes possible our characteristic brand of pluralistic bargaining-compromising discussion of public issues, which is probably about as close to the model of creative democratic discussion in the nation-state as a community like the United States can hope to get.

The presbyter is the same as the bishop, and before parties had been raised up in religion by the provocations of Satan, the churches were governed by the Senate of the presbyters. But as each one sought to appropriate to himself those whom he had baptized, instead of leading them to Christ, it was appointed that one the presbyters, elected by his colleagues, should be set over all the others, and have chief supervision over the general well-being of the community...Without doubt it is the duty of the presbyters to bear in mind that by the discipline of the Church they are subordinated to him who has been given them as their head, but it is fitting that the bishops, on their side, do not forget that if they are set over the presbyters, it is the result of tradition, and not by the fact of a particular institution by the Lord

I believe more than ever before in the power of nonviolent resistance. It has a moral aspect tied to it. It makes it possible for the individual to secure moral ends through moral means[...] While addressing an audience in Birmingham, a man mounted the stage and suddenly punched King in the face, while a shocked audience watched in amazement as King made no move to strike back or turn away. Instead he looked at his assailant and spoke calmly to him. Within seconds, several people pulled the attacker away. While others led the crowd in song, King and his colleagues spoke with the assailant at the rear of the stage. Then King returned to the podium to tell the audience that the man was twenty-four-year-old Roy James, a member of the Nazi Party from Arlington, Viriginia. King refused to press charges.

THIRD-PARTY INVESTIGATION. Recent studies on spiritual abuse have highlighted multiple problems with the current system, but one of the most significant is the way abuse allegations are “investigated.” Typically, such investigations are done in-house, often by friends or colleagues of the abusive pastor and by people who have no real training on how to identify abuse. Of course, many of these in-house investigations end up vindicating the abusive pastor. Again, this is precisely what happened with Bill Hybels, Steve Timmis, and James MacDonald. The initial “investigation” in each of these cases supposedly exonerated these leaders. It was only later, upon closer scrutiny, that the abuse was recognized.

How do knowledge workers decide when to say no to the constant bombardment of incoming requests? In the modern office context, they tend to rely on stress as a default heuristic for moderation. If you turn down a Zoom meeting invitation, there’s a social-capital cost, as you’re causing some mild harm to a colleague and potentially signaling yourself to be uncooperative or a loafer. But, if you feel sufficiently stressed about your workload, this cost might become acceptable: you feel confident that you’re close to becoming unsustainably busy, and this provides psychological cover to skip the Zoom. You need to feel sufficient personal distress to justify the distress saying no might generate in the other party.

Obama’s failure to act has been blamed on his inexperience, his unfamiliarity with finance and business, and a personal tendency to avoid conflict (or, to be blunt, on his being a coward). Some, including my colleague Charles Morris, also feel that the political system is now so gridlocked and dysfunctional that transformative policy changes are simply no longer feasible by anyone, so that Obama really couldn’t have done anything even if he had tried. If so, then we’re really screwed. But if anyone had a shot, it was Barack Obama in 2009, and he didn’t try. Admittedly, it would have taken real personal courage, and it would have been a hard fight—Wall Street would not have just rolled over. The logic and incentive structures of America’s political duopoly are such that in taking the path of least resistance, Obama was surely acting in his, and his party’s, rational self-interest. But whatever Obama’s personal motivations, America (and indeed the whole world) will pay dearly for his failure for a long time.

Indeed cocktail parties are death as I am sure 99 per cent of DS colleagues would agree. Whoever it was who suggested an international treaty banning National Day receptions should be canonised.

recognize that many do not have that luxury and I respect the choices they have to make in similar circumstances. All I can do is encourage them to rejoin work if they truly wish to. One of my colleagues took a break for seven years when her children were very young and spent her time baking cakes and organizing birthday parties. Now back at work, she is one of our most valuable people. Another colleague from our finance team said that she needed to quit as her son was in the tenth standard in school and needed attention, but we convinced her to stay on and work only half-day for the next one year, till the exams were done with. On

There is no solidarity in a meritocracy. The very idea contradicts the ideology of the well-graduated technocrats who rule us. As we shall see, leading members of the professional class show enormous respect for one another -- what I will call "professional courtesy" -- but they feel precious little sympathy for the less fortunate members of their own cohort -- for the adjuncts frozen out of the academic market for tenure, for colleagues who got fired, or even for the kids who don't get into "good" colleges. That life doesn't shower its blessings on people who can't make the grade isn't a shock or an injustice; it's the way things ought to be. This has all sorts of important consequences for liberalism, but let us here take note of just one before proceeding: professionals do not hold that other Democratic constituency, organized labor, in particularly high regard. This attitude is documented in study after study of professional-class life. One reason for this is because solidarity, the core value of unions, stands in stark contradiction to the doctrine of individual excellence that every profession embodies. The idea that someone should command good pay for doing a job that doesn't require specialized training seems to professionals to be an obvious fallacy.

I can assure you that ‘Obamacare’ did not diminish our research efforts in any way,” he said. “However, the sequestration efforts of the right-wing conservatives and their Tea Party colleagues have hampered progress in medical research. The National Institutes of Health is suffering greatly, and it is very difficult for all investigators to obtain funding. You can’t blame the Affordable Care Act, but you certainly can blame the Republicans.

Legal obfuscation and amnesty schemes The UPA government is trying to use every trick of the trade to provide escape routes for black money looters. Take, for example, the complex strategy being adopted to change the colour of money from black to white, with a unique ‘Fair and Lovely’ amnesty recipe. The press reported in 2011 that the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) was “seriously considering” recommending to the government a scheme on the lines of the Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) announced in 1996 to bring back black money stashed in tax havens abroad for productive use in India. It is reported that the source of the money will not have to be disclosed, but criminal action will be taken if the money (or the assets) pertain to proceeds of crime. How the two halves of the sentence can be harmonised defies logic. In a democracy, every citizen is entitled to know the character and integrity of every other citizen, lest one day a crook manipulates a constituency of voters and colleagues in his party and occupies the office of prime minister. Concealing vast amounts of money and depriving a poverty-stricken nation of the revenue it badly needs is a criminal offence by itself. How would we find out whether or not one such criminal is already in office, instead of being in Tihar Jail?

experiencing dramatic and sudden change. We entered the town square where one hundred thousand Polish workers had gathered. They were waving American flags and shouting, “Bush, Bush, Bush… Freedom, Freedom, Freedom.” I turned to my colleague Robert Blackwill of the National Security Council staff and said, “This is not exactly what Karl Marx meant when he said, ‘Workers of the world unite.’” But, indeed, they had “nothing to lose but their chains.” Two months later, the Polish Communist Party gave way to a Solidarity-led government.

In 1966, American anthropologist Edward T. Hall specified four distinct distance zones to describe the perception of physical space around us. Understanding these zones and honoring their invisible boundaries will give you a sixth sense about another person’s “space” as well as your own. Intimate Zone (less than 2’) —This zone represents our personal space and is reserved for the most trusted and loved people in our lives. Touching, hugging, standing side by side, and engaging in private conversations is common and encouraged. When an interloper violates this personal space, great discomfort and awkwardness can be created. What to do? Take a step back or sideways. Personal Zone (2’-4’) —This is the distance for interaction with good friends, family, social gatherings, or parties. It's an easy and relaxed space for talking, shaking hands, gesturing, laughing and making faces. Social Zone (4’-12') —This zone seems to be an appropriate distance for casual friends, colleagues, and acquaintances to interact. It is the comfortable distance we maintain while interacting or addressing large groups of people. Public Zone (over 12’) —This is the distance we keep from strangers or persons with little acquaintance. It provides the greatest distance between people. This is a safe space that still allows us to experience community and belonging with new people.

Nurturing Activities Self-Assessment In this section, you will discover the things you are doing now to nurture your well-being. In the section “Things I Do Now,” write all the activities you can think of that you really enjoy that you do now. For example, you may enjoy getting a massage, working out in the gym, playing tennis, reading a novel, or just taking a walk in the woods. Next think about how each of these activities supports one or more of the four dimensions of your personal growth and development: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Activities that promote physical development include such things as exercise, relaxation, and massage. Those that promote emotional development include fun things with others that make you happy, such as attending a party with friends, seeing an inspirational film, or just sharing a meal with your family. You can promote your intellectual development by, for example, reading newspapers or intellectually stimulating magazines or books, attending courses, or having intellectual discussions with your colleagues. Activities that give your life meaning and help you connect to something greater than yourself give you spiritual meaning. These can be activities done in a religious context, such as attending services, but they can also be purely secular, such as reading an inspirational poem or practicing mindfulness. Next think about things that you are not doing now but would like to do. Again consider how each of these activities supports the four dimensions. This is your self-care plan. Things I Do Now: Activity Physical Emotional Intellectual Inner Life Self-Care Plan: Activity Physical Emotional Intellectual Inner Life

know. This was not I can’t wait to see you. Let’s get together. You stepped up and I really wanted to thank you for doing it. I know Hillary. I know she was being as sincere as possible, but I wanted something more from her. The 2016 campaign, convention, and election had shattered long-standing relationships, leaving old friends wary of one another. This was more than the burnout and dejection that follows a crushing loss. The Russian dirty cybertricks that were still just coming to light had left everyone scarred and scared. We were all unable to reach out to the people we normally counted on. As the call wrapped up, Hillary said she hoped I would be okay. That was when I almost lost it. Even if the party was starting to regain its footing, I was not okay. I had nothing left to return to. This campaign had tarnished my reputation, forced me to step down from CNN, and strained my relationships with colleagues and friends.

Do you date a lot?” “I suppose you could say I do,” he answered. “There are women I’m friendly with and we share certain interests. There’s a neighbor woman I’ve known for years who is a food critic for the newspaper, and sometimes she invites me along to restaurants she’s reviewing—what an opportunity! She doesn’t listen to a word I say about the food, but I love the whole experience. I have a colleague I can invite to those college parties I’m forced to attend—she’s single and doesn’t usually have a date, either. Mainly I have a number of friends who happen to be women, and if I’m looking for something to do, I might give one of them a call.” He turned and looked toward her. “Maureen, I don’t have anything romantic going on with anyone. Ridiculous as it might be to think a man my age could be a playboy, I promise you, I am not.” “I didn’t mean—” He grinned and grabbed her hand. “Of course you did, and not only am I encouraged, I’m flattered!” “Well, don’t be,” she said. “I didn’t mean that.” And then he laughed at her. George

Faced with the task of building a strong, cohesive corporate culture, many software companies have borrowed heavily from other organizations. Trilogy Software made headlines by sending its new recruits to a training “boot camp” for three months—with classes running from 8:00 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week, for the first month. Other companies, such as Scient, subject their new recruits to intense pep rallies, with constant repetition of the company slogan— “I’m on fire!” The popularity of these tactics has even led to some hand-wringing about the cult-like character of many business initiation rituals. One writer for Shift magazine captured the dilemma quite well in a brilliant article entitled “Why Your Fabulous Job Sucks.” “Work is a blast. Your colleagues are cool and they dig having your dog around. But something evil lures you to the company beer fridge. Ever wonder why you’re never home?” The observation here is quite astute. Creating a cool work environment, holding fabulous office parties with great bands, letting people wear whatever they want, setting up the LAN for multiplayer gaming— this may all seem like corporate generosity. But it also has a sound economic rationale. All these devices help to build among young employees allegiance, loyalty, and a willingness to work. The easiest way to persuade people to pull an all-nighter is to make being at the office more fun than being at home.

I am vice president,” wrote John Adams, the first to inhabit the office. “In this I am nothing. But I may be everything.” In January 1961, as Lyndon Johnson left the Senate for the vice presidency, his future held the dim but tantalizing promise of the presidency, of “everything.” But in the meantime LBJ would not resign himself to nothingness. It was not his nature. Throughout his life Johnson had assumed positions with no inherent power base and infused them with irrepressible energy, drive, and ambition: as assistant to President Cecil E. Evans of Southwest Texas State Teachers’ College, as speaker of the “Little Congress” of staff members in the 1940s, and as party whip and leader in the 1950s, power seemed to flow to him and issue from him naturally. In Johnson’s political ascent, power was the constant; public offices were quantities to be stretched, exploited for public and personal gain, and, ultimately, discarded along the climb. If this was arrogance, it was well grounded. Lyndon Johnson was never nothing; and if the vice presidency meant little today, that could not be the case for long. The press accepted Johnson’s bold claim with little skepticism. On the eve of the inauguration, U.S. News & World Report exclaimed that “the vice presidency is to become a center of activity and power unseen in the past.” The magazine foresaw “important assignments” for LBJ in foreign affairs, especially in the explosive Cuban situation. Undoubtedly, President Kennedy would rely heavily upon the negotiating skills of his brilliant second, Lyndon Johnson, “a new kind of vice president.” And LBJ, surely, would demand no less. “The restless and able Mr. Johnson is obviously unwilling to become a ceremonial nonentity,” Tom Wicker rightly predicted in the New York Times. Johnson’s former Senate colleagues agreed, assuring reporters that LBJ “will be very important in the new Administration—and much utilized.” Headlines heralded Washington’s new “Number 2 Man.

Aditya is fond of his whisky but prefers to drink at home when he is with his family. Deepak loves Beck's and Heineken beer with his Sunday lunches. His evening preference is Johnnie Walker's Blue Label. He holds the glass but hardly drinks, only taking small sips every once in a while. A smart strategy, especially when he has to hop parties for networking. Ram doesn't drink. For Paresh, even tea is poison. Rajan finds beer too strong and, given a chance, will dilute it. Vinod, the 'original Brit' as some of his colleagues dub him, is always measured in drinking, like his steps while walking. They are all very different from one another; they have their whims, their fancies, their idiosyncrasies, but they have coexisted wonderfully well in professional harmony.